Ever played a game with all the bells and whistles that was terribly unfun to play? We all have, with good reason. Jamie Fristrom suggests that in the balance between quality and scope, developers tend to choose to make a bigger game.

This tendency also impacts the writing in a game. We have seen some games make great strides with their story, but the player has to wade through blocks of text to even get to it. City of Heroes has some quite interesting storylines, but each mission in an arc could have paragraphs and paragraphs of text. It’s hard to find time to do all this reading when you have teammates to defend.

Instead of expanding the scope, improving the quality of game writing lessens scope. Much like when streamlining design features, clean writing could have a bottom line effect. We worked on a project where we reduced the word count significantly, which will at least have an impact on the voiceover budget. The reduction will also offer a hidden benefit. With fewer words, the players will be more inclined to read the quick blurbs of text as they hack away at their next task.

I think I’ll reduce the scope of this post right now with this conclusion:

I did work on a game project where I refocused and streamlined a company’s story. I did end up having to delete a lot of the previous material. Mind you, it wasn’t my material, so I wasn’t very attached to it.
– Sande